Virginia Hamilton (18 page)

Again they talked of the future, easing it into the conversation without a second thought. They talked again of t’beings and Slakers and Thomas’ grand illusions. But no one told how Tom-Tom had run away just to spite Justice. They kept the struggle between Justice and Thomas to themselves. Maybe, with the coming, of Malevolence, that had changed.

Mr. and Mrs. Douglass suspected something about Thomas. As he talked on and on, the more they realized how unkind he could be and how stealthy and improper was his train of thought.

He told them he could get them anything they needed to live, that neither of them need ever work again. “G-get wh-what I w-w-want f-f-for f-f-free,” he stuttered.

“Thomas,” Justice said. But nothing could stop him once he’d got going on his masterful illusions.

Until Mr. and Mrs. Douglass drew into themselves, away from their children. Mr. Douglass encircled his wife in his arms protectively. She cringed tightly against him.

Just when everything was going so well, Justice thought.

Her folks wouldn’t look at them. They had pulled into themselves, where they might still find some safety.

Finally Thomas noticed and left off.

You’re a first-class idiot,
Justice traced to him.

Look, I was only trying to get them good and relaxed. But they act like we’re some freaks!

You never understand anything,
Justice traced.

Well,
you
sure know it all!

“We’d better get some sleep,” she said, breaking the silence at the table.

Mr. Douglass loosened his hold on his wife. She straightened in her chair, but did not look up. Justice knew not to offer to do the dishes, and she traced a warning to Levi not to offer his help. They’d best retreat now. She hoped that she and her brothers would always be able to come back home. And for the first time she seriously wondered whether they’d always be welcome.

The three of them slept a deep and soundless sleep. Justice slept longest. It was well past noon when she awoke to the tinny, chim/chi-chim, chim/chi-chim of Thomas’ standing cymbals.

Oh, my goodness! she thought. It felt like years since she had heard her brother’s steady rhythms. She appreciated his cymbals much more than she did his set of drums. Cymbals had a tantalizing sound. Somehow the sound mixed yellow with the sunlight now streaming into her room. She stretched, yawned at the day so bright and hot outside her window.

“Great,” she said. She got up. And without disturbing anyone, she padded down the hall to the bathroom, took a shower and got dressed in her usual attire of jeans and tank top.

Maybe will have to change to shorts, she thought. Let’s see how it is.

Justice wandered the property aimlessly, thoroughly preoccupied with the heady sights, sounds and smells of life in the present. In the backyard the garden was growing fine. She picked a big, fat, early-ripened tomato—the only one, too—right off the vine. Ate it, with its juice escaping down her hand. It was so good.

On the west side of the field they owned, she found the ageless hedgerow that she loved walking through.

“Right where I left it!” she said to herself, kidding. It was her favorite place of all, with the line of century-old trees marching down to the end of the property to the right of Dorian Jefferson’s house. Great old branches reached out across the row a few feet above the ground, seeking sunlight. She sat on one of the horizontal branches, making it swing. Not long ago she and Thomas and Levi, with all the other neighborhood kids, had hung containers of garter snakes from the branches. That was when Thomas had invented his Great Snake Race; and, to everyone’s eternal surprise, Justice had won it.

And here’s the place I first discovered I had something different about me, and that my brothers did, too, she thought.

After a while the cymbals inside the house ceased and the drums began their mighty noise.

Brother, he sure loves booming away, Justice thought of Thomas.

Later Thomas and Levi could be seen wandering around, too. She kept out of their way by hiding in the row. They knew she was there and let her have it to herself.

Thomas telepathed to her a mean thought just to get her goat:
Cut down them trees for firewood.

Osage orange trees won’t burn,
Justice ’pathed to him,
you dumb, stupid dummy!
With anger she hadn’t known she was feeling.

Aw, I was only kidding you. Don’t get upset.

Justice let it go, mildly surprised at his near-apology. While in the row, she started reading one of the books her mom had got her. The book was about dragons and princely knights. It made her laugh; it didn’t take her breath away as it would have if she hadn’t gone
away
and come back. .

By evening Thomas and Levi had wrestled a four-wheeled dolly with Thomas’ kettledrums on it out of the house, down the backyard and into the field. They and the neighborhood boys met in the field practically every night.

All of them boys, Justice thought. Who cares?

But she couldn’t help going to see what Thomas was up to, and to see all the boys again, Dorian included. It felt like she hadn’t seen the kids in years, and she knew it felt the same for her brothers. Earlier in the day all three of them had resisted running off to find everyone. The kids would have simply forgotten about them from the moment at dawn when they’d left for the future. Mrs. Jefferson would’ve seen to that—not hypnotizing the kids, but suggesting to an area of their memories that Thomas, Justice, Levi and Dorian did not exist. The deep and rolling tone of the kettles was the key that would unlock their memories again.

An hour after suppertime the neighborhood seemed deserted. The hedgerow, twisted by hard weather, spread early-evening shade across the Douglass field. Levi, Thomas and Justice stood in separate pools of dappled light.

Thomas, clutching four felt-tip mallets, two in each hand, struck them on the calfskin drumheads of the kettles. There commenced a low, trembling sound. It began to build into a bass roar that rolled down the field and on through the hedges of backyards to hit the rear window screens of houses. So much sound was almost visible, bouncing away and sailing over front lawns to slide smoothly into Dayton Street.

As if on cue, Dorian Jefferson slammed out of the back door of his house, sprinted across his backyard, took his back hedge in one perfect low-hurdle stretch-step and bounded into the field on both feet. Standing.

“Sweet!” hollered Thomas, still drumming. “Perfect hurdle, man!”

Dorian grinned from ear to ear. A compliment from Thomas! He’d been waiting practically the whole day for some sign of life from the Douglass house. He knew better than to make a move over there until the three kids were ready and until Mr. and Mrs. Douglass had settled down some.

Running, Dorian zigged and zagged his way up the field. He confronted the three with his dirty-faced, ragged self, still grinning. They all slapped palms. Thomas put his sticks down long enough to do so. No one thought about being the unit. In the field they were simply friends. Thomas started up again; the field boomed and crashed, shaking startled birds out of the trees.

Other boys appeared, as though by signal. Thomas greeted them with rushing swells and rolls of beats as they came off the street and through backyards. There was a kid named Slick Peru, and Danny Grier, who was Thomas’ drum teacher’s son, and Talley Williams, and a lot of other boys.

Thomas drummed well and acted as if he might be going to drum forever. Justice knew he hadn’t called forth the kids just for a drum concert. He loved an audience, though, and he loved inventing games. He’d been drumming when first he invented the Great Snake Race. Also, when drumming, Thomas talked smoothly, and maybe talking smoothly made describing his inventions easier. Justice realized suddenly that in the future Thomas had not stuttered at all. That was because only their minds had been there, she decided; and in his mind Thomas never stuttered.

His drums were humming just loud enough for him to talk above the sound.

“This here’s a new game,” he began, “of which I”—Pom-pa-Pom—“the Master Drummer”—Pom-Pom, Pom-Pom—“am sole inventor and owner.” Pom, Pom pah-pah Pom.

“It is called”—Pom!—“the game”—
POM-POM POM
—“of Dustland!”

Justice did not move a muscle.

“Or Humans versus Slakers!” Pom pah-pah Pom Pom.

“What are Slakers?” Talley wanted to know.

“Why, buddy,” began Thomas, his drums fairly singing, “Slakers are winged females with bald pink heads!”

The boys laughed loudly. “Fool!” they said.

“Slakers bomb you from the air with furry eggs.” Pom-ah, Pom-ah.

Boys fell out on the ground.

“But how do you play it?” asked Slick, recovering. “What’s it called—Dustland?”

“Yea, how do you win it?” somebody else asked.

“Think of Dungeons and Dragons,” Thomas said, which was a real game that you could buy and which several of them owned. His drums rolled. “Each kid has assets and liabilities, whether human or Slaker. For instance, I, a human, can cloud boys’ minds and make you see whatever I want you to see. I’m called the Illusionist.”

Justice found herself grinning. Levi suppressed a laugh.

“What I can’t do”—Pom-ma-Pom—”is knock a Slaker out of the sky. But I can cause one to land with my illusion of a crystal lake. Slakers go crazy over fresh water.”

“Sounds like fun,” said Slick. “But if I want to be a Slaker, how do I learn to fly?”

“How do you become a girl, you mean!” Boys laughed and snickered, much to Justice’s disgust.

“Dummy!” Thomas said. Clearly, he had not thought the game through. He would have to start over and change the females to male flyers, which was the way it should be, he thought. He was tired of drumming. He would not risk stuttering by talking. A long look passed between him and Levi, which told Justice that they were tracing. Obviously, Levi was being told what to say through telepathy. The next moment he was making the females wingless.

“It’s a game you can do in your living room or on the phone or anywhere. Also, we need some pencils and paper,” Levi said. “I’ll get some. Each of you decide what you will be, human or Slaker, and what your goods and bads are. You get more points for bads.” He avoided looking at Justice.

She was furious.
You know the flyers are women, you know it!
she traced to Thomas.

Butt out,
he traced back.
This is a game for
guys!

Levi was leaving the field for pencil and paper when it happened, just like before with not an inkling. Except for that split instant of clairvoyance when Justice knew—but there was no time. It had come.

It swept below the grass, coming up the field. Only Thomas, Levi, Justice and Dorian knew it was there. It moved with such swiftness they had not a moment to join. How could they join in front of the boys? But they would have if there had been time, and worried about it later.

Malevolence had swept between the three of them and Dorian. It would not permit the first unit. It made them aware that it had a t’being pinned to its will. It could drop the t’being on the grass if it wanted to. It pretended that it would, but it didn’t.

After that, it came each day with dreadful power. Mal came to make sure they were still there and not in the future.

Mrs. Douglass felt herself slipping back into a way of life that she wouldn’t have dreamed would be hers ever again. The children had been home over a month now. After that first night, not once had they shown a trace of awesome forces. Thomas never again spoke of getting what he wanted through his illusions. There was no unheard-of glowing in Justice’s eyes. If anything, the children were supernormal, going about their daily, lazy summer lives with casual determination. She could almost believe that whatever it was they had, never was. In fact, she decided it was gone and told her husband so.

“They act like anybody else,” she told him. “Is it possible we could have imagined it all?”

“June, have you forgotten what happened?” Speaking about the time when the children had revealed their power.

That Mrs. Jefferson creeping into her house.

How could I have been such a fool to leave Justice alone, at the beck and call of that woman? Mrs. Douglass wondered.

Yes, she had been in summer school, and one day she’d come home and it had all begun.

No. Maybe all of it was mass hysteria. They say it happens, she thought. A group of factory workers on an assembly line suddenly see a strange mist and it makes them weak and sick. She’d read about that just recently. Absolutely unexplainable. No escaping gases or anything like that had been detected. And it was mass hysteria attributed to boring, monotonous work. But none in her house worked an assembly line.

Now she and her husband were tidying the kitchen after dinner. She’d finished icing a sheet cake for the kids for when they came back from Thomas’ drumming in the field.

“They get along so well,” she was saying, turning the cake, admiring it. She knew the children would come in again and again for extra pieces. “Levi has got a sense of humor just like you, have you noticed?”

“June, please. Don’t get your hopes up. It’s better you consider them forever strangers. It’s easier … Less pain …”

“Oh, for God’s sakes!” Furious at him. “My kids are fine, as normal as can be.”

“You’d better listen to me,” he said. “There’s only heartache in wishing it’d go away. It won’t! It’s real. Nothing will ever be the same. It’s here and now! Our kids, our own flesh and blood, are the race to come. They’re here … first unit!” His voice shaking.

June Douglass spoke in whispered fury: “I don’t want to hear about power or Watchers or anything dreadful ever again!”

She stalked out and slammed the door to the bedroom.

She slumbered for what seemed a long time. Through it she was never awake, but she was not quite asleep either. She could still hear Thomas’ drums in the field and boys laughing. Once Justice yelling. They were playing some game or other. She heard somebody yell, “Gotta fly! Gotta fly!” and she was sure a ballgame was going on. Then a long time of nothing, when sound ceased and the evening darkened to night. When she opened her eyes, it was ten-thirty, she saw by the clock on her dresser.